Godly spanking turned deadly: Is a Tennessee pastor to blame?

Last spring an 11-year-old girl was found dead in her parent’s backyard in Sedro-Woolley, Wash. Hana, an adopted child from Ethiopia, was naked, emaciated and covered in bruises.

Her parents claimed that they were following advice in a pro-corporal book To Train Up A Child when they beat her with a 15-inch plastic plumbing line, which is specifically mentioned as a tool for swatting children in the parenting manual.

Now the authors of the book, a Tennessee pastor Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, have come under fire for encouraging parents to spank their children. Many are blaming them for the death of Hana. But Hana wasn’t spanked. She was clearly beaten and the Pearls advocate against extreme beating and they say that out-of-control parents shouldn’t use their method. Is it fair to place the blame on this couple who believe corporal punishment is called for in the Bible?

Two more children die: Lydia and Sean

Hana isn’t the first child to die in the hands of parents who are devout followers of the Pearls’ method. Seven-year-old Lydia Schatz was beaten to death with plastic plumbing tubing. Her adoptive parents whipped her for hours, “with pauses for prayer,” according to the NY Times. She died “from severe tissue damage” in Paradise, Calif., in 2010; her parents are in prison.

Yet another horrible story: Sean Paddock, 4, was accidentally suffocated by his mother, who wrapped him in a blanket in 2006. His brothers and sisters told the court that they were hit with the same plastic tubing. The mom’s in prison. The dad got off.

Christian parents embrace “Biblical Chastisement” movement

The Pearls’ self-published book To Train Up A Child is popular among Christian home-schoolers (Hana and Lydia were both home-schooled). More than 670,000 copies have been sold, and the Pearls’ No Greater Joy Ministries business grosses $1.7 million a year from sales of books and videos.

The Pearls’ book seems to be part of a growing movement that legitimizes the hitting of children in the name of God. Mr. Pearl told CNN that he represents 230 million parents who practice corporal chastisement on children. His book is widely praised on Christian sites and he has received remarkable support from churchgoers since the most recent child death. And there are other parenting experts who preach Biblical chastisement such as Ted Tripp who writes “God calls parents to spank their children” in his book Shepherding a Child’s Heart.

The Pearls also have plenty of enemies and some are saying that there’s something fundamentally wrong with associating their method with Christianity. A Christian parents group started a petition on Change.org asking Amazon to stop stocking books that advocate “parenting methods that involve the physical abuse of children.”

The Pearls claim to advocate spanking, not beating

Mr. Pearl and his wife offer up a lot of typical advice in their book, advising parents to be loving and spend time with their children. They also tell parents to start swatting their children with objects such as rods, belts and rules as young as six months.

An excerpt from the book reads:

Any spanking to effectively reinforce instruction, must cause pain. Select your instrument according to the child’s size. For the under one-year-old child, a small, ten-to twelve-inch-long willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch in diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sough. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a suitable substitute. For the larger child, a belt or a three-foot cutting off a shrub is effective.

The plastic tubing is also recommended because its flexible and parents can hang it around their neck. “The high profile of their accessibility keeps the kids in line,” the Pearls write in their book.

Mr. Pearl says he got the idea for the plumbing line from an Amish women who had 10 kids and always kept a piece around her neck. “She said when the kids are disobedient I have it right at hand, and she said just the presence of it lets them know that they have to walk the line,” he told CNN.

The Pearls describe their discipline method as corporal chastisement, and they claim that children who are spanked grow into obedient, happy, creative, cheerful emotionally stable people. They tell parents to not spank their children out of anger and they advise against extreme or severe beatings.

With the recent controversy over his book, Mr. Pearl feels that the media has misinterpreted his advice on spanking to mean beating. Mr. Pearl recently got into a disagreement with CNN‘s Anderson Cooper over the difference between spanking and beating.

Cooper said: “You say you don’t advocate hitting or beating or hurting kids which under the law is considered child abuse but in your book you say that spankings have to cause pain and you’re talking about spanking a baby under one year old with a ruler? How does a baby not end up bruised and hurting when it’s hit with a ruler?”

Mr. Pearl responded: “You’re changing the word ‘spank’ to ‘beat’ or ‘hit’ is inflammatory rhetoric, which obscures what I’m saying…”

Spanking or beating, no matter. Three children are dead. And while the Pearls might not have killed these children with their own hands, they have written a book that’s leading some parents to criminal behavior. Doesn’t it seem like they should step up and take some responsibility?